


Shining Shimmering Splendid

by Methoxyethane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aladdin (1992) Fusion, M/M, Princess Keith, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 01:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16567031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Methoxyethane/pseuds/Methoxyethane
Summary: By the time the fireworks had finished and Lance flew Keith home to drop him back off on his balcony, that flicker of vulnerable affection had blossomed into the first flames of love. By that same time the next night, Zakron had stolen a genie and nearly doomed the entire kingdom.Honestly, the fact that his prince was a fraud who had nearly gotten them all killed was kind of a relief in retrospect. You couldn’t earn a happy ending without at least SOMETHING going horribly wrong first, after all.





	Shining Shimmering Splendid

Keith was a mess, but to be fair, so was his life right now.

He had already done his big show of storming off into his room, but in reality he knew there was nothing he could do. He was a barely-of-age prince in a sultanate that had existed for thousands of years; Keith was powerless, and had never been more aware of it than this moment.

He had tried to run away, and his selfishness had cost a kind boy his life. Now Keith was STILL stuck marrying some pompous douchebag only after his crown and Lance… How could Zarkon have just executed him like that without even asking Keith what had happened? How could the man his father had trusted for decades be so cruel…?

And there was just nothing Keith could do. A new suitor was here he didn’t have the heart or energy to scare off right now, and it wouldn’t matter even when Keith did get rid of him because his fate of being married off into permanent palatial imprisonment would not and could not change. He’d seen what happened when he tried to go out and do things for himself, now.

Red bumped her giant nose against Keith’s side, and he ran his fingers through the tiger’s fur lovingly. “At least I have you, huh, buddy?”

A brief nuzzle from his friend, who Keith gratefully draped himself over in a hug. Which is how he felt it when the great cat tensed up, ears pointing towards the curtain closing off Keith’s bedroom from the balcony.

Keith looked up to see what looked like the silhouette of a person, floating about where there didn't seem to be anywhere to stand. He shot up to fling it open, jaw dropping as he saw - oh god, was that _Lance_?!

It was not. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” grinned noneother than his newest nuisance himself, Prince Leandro of the Buttheads, standing on the railing of Keith’s balcony like breaking into his room was an idea to be proud of.

“Oh good fucking Allah,” Keith spat, rolling his eyes as he leaned against the wall. “What are you doing in my room? I should just skip over calling the guards and stab you myself.”

The prince held up his hands defensively, looking as alarmed as he rightly should have. “Hey, hey, no need to get violent! I just never got the chance to actually introduce myself to you properly, we totally skipped that part and I mean, I’m kind of trying to marry you here.”

He shot Keith what was probably supposed to be a charming smile, but was in reality just irritating. You know what, Keith wasn’t even dealing with this. He turned around, intending to head back inside with nothing more than a dismissive. “Oh, go throw yourself off a bridge.”

“Yeah, I uh… Okay. I probably should, huh?” Prince Leandro sighed in disappointment, and Keith was stopped by his own surprise as from the corner of his eye he seemed to see the man dramatically flopping off of Keith’s third story balcony.

“W-wait!” Keith whipped around, running over to the railing to see - a perfectly intact prince, landed comfortably on a very nice floor rug floating mid-air as easily as a leaf. “What on Earth…”

“Pretty neat, huh!” Prince Leandro declared, hovering up to meet Keith at eye-level. Eyes that were a deep shining blue, the likes of which Keith had only seen once before in his entire life and that had been the _very day before_ …

“Did you really arrive in Agrabah this afternoon?” Keith found himself asking, voice laden heavy with suspicion. “And that you weren’t already here yesterday? Like, in the marketplace?”

Panic swept the prince’s handsome face, and he backpedalled violently to the edge of his carpet. “T-the marketplace? H-haha! Don’t be ridiculous, I’d never be caught in such a f-f-filthy place like a market! That’s what I have servants for! The servants OF my servants for, even! _So as not to track in dirt!_ ”

Keith frowned. What the hell did that answer even MEAN? His servant’s servants?What was going on here, was this guy even real?

Waving off Keith’s baffled expression, the prince stood up and offered Keith a beaming smile. “Anyway, wanna check it out?”

“Check what out?”

Prince Leandro shrugged. “I dunno, everything? Wherever Carpet can fly us, I guess. The world.”

Keith hesitated, feeling his heart pound. “I don’t…” He started, not sure where he was going with the sentence because his mind was already too muddled.

Leandro’s hand reached out to Keith, ready to pull him onto the carpet. “Here, it’ll be alright. Do you trust me?”

Deja vu hit Keith as his memory overlapped those exact same words spoken in that exact same voice not a day before. No way… There was just no way they could be DIFFERENT people, could they? This prince and the boy from yesterday...

If Zarkon said he had killed Lance for kidnapping Keith, then was it even remotely possible they were the same person? Unless… Someone ABOVE Zarkon had ordered him to say that Lance was dead so he could pretend he never got caught wandering around in disguise and meeting with Keith unchaperoned. If Lance really was Prince Leandro, he’d have to do something like that to make his grand entrance, right?

It barely made any sense, but… then again, meeting two handsome boys with the same blue eyes two days in a row didn’t make much sense, either. No matter what,  it was enough for Keith to reach out his own in return.

“No, I really don’t,” Keith answered with a smile, letting Leandro pull him off the railing of the balcony and onto his gravity-defying rug.

The carpet supported his weight easily, not losing any altitude with his weight but still bending with the give of woven fabric. It was strange and terrifying, and Leandro guided him to sit down with him so as to minimize the risk of losing balance and toppling off into the abyss of night.

They rose slowly at first, Keith’s heart rising alongside their altitude as the palace slowly shrunk out of sight into the clouds. Gods above… He had thought he knew what the city looked like from the top floors of the palace, but that was nothing like seeing Agrabah like _this_. The sweeping valleys, the oasis lake the palace had been built around, the perfectly-placed lines of streets and buildings all curving into each other to make a network easy to navigate even by moonlight.

“It’s so beautiful,” Keith gasped, clinging to the prince’s arm as they swept upwards over a steep hill. “Are we already on the other side of the city? How far can we go?”

The prince shot him a grin, a smile so pure and joyful Keith couldn’t possibly even believe this was anyone _other_ than Lance. “Wherever we want! How far do you wanna go, Prince Keith?”

His fingers curled into Lance’s sleeve, heart pounding. He tried to make it sound like a joke, but Keith’s voice was tellingly strained as he teased, “What, you’ll take me all the way to the other side of the world and never come back if I just ask?”

“Sure we can run away,” Lance shrugged back with a laugh. “As long as you take me with you, anyway.”

Keith didn’t have any response beyond a sharp intake of air in his lungs, which was dispelled with a sharp laugh as the carpet shot off to climb over the sky high enough to leave Agrabah out of sight.

They flew straight over the empty sands of the desert, far enough into the sky to feel the dampness of the clouds clinging to their hair. They flew over seas of water more vast than Keith had ever imagined, shining speckles of starlight reflecting off the water and making it look like they were flying straight into infinity. Past the waters onto fields of pure green, plants and grasses that coated the Earth like a blanket and made Keith marvel in wonder.

Fields of flowers they flew so low through that Lance could pluck some from the ground they past to weave into Keith’s hair. Forests filled with trees, plains filled with wild horses spooked out of grazing to set into gallop off all at once. They had been flying on the prince’s magic carpet for only a few short hours, but it was enough time to give Keith a taste of the entire world he’d longed for so long.

Keith had, in his life, been afraid of only one thing, and that was marriage. Marriage had been a looming cage, a strange older man who he’d be forced to share a bed with and never be allowed to say no to haunting his nightmares since he had first come of age. He had fought against his fate as hard as he could, has tried to escape it in every way including literal with his trip out of the castle the other day…

And then he had met Lance. Prince Leandro, who had swooped in with an offer to turn everything he’d been afraid of into everything he’d ever wanted. Leandro had given him more freedom in this one short night than anyone had ever granted Keith with in his life, and suddenly everything was scary for a whole different reason. Instead of being afraid his life was ruined, Keith was now carrying hope for a future he might spend travelling the world with this strange too-charming prince… And oh man, was _hope_ the most terrifying feeling he had ever known.

“Wow, the fireworks are so loud from this close!” Leandro marveled, hand clutching Keith’s like he was afraid the sound might shake one of them off the roof. “And there are so many colors, have you ever seen anything like this?”

He sounded genuinely delighted, wonder lighting his face ever brighter than the colored lights of distant fire did. A prince with a magic carpet and he was still delighted by such simple pleasures… he wasn’t just handsome and generous, Lance was irrepressibly charming, too. Maybe the hope his future might be happy wasn’t the scariest thing, after all. Keith’s willingness to open himself up to _feelings_ for this man was making him tremble, as well.

“No, it’s amazing,” Keith agreed, leaning into Leandro’s side with a sly smile. “It’s just too bad Pidge couldn’t be here to enjoy it, too.”

“Nah, she hates fireworks. And all loud noises, really.” Lance blinked, realizing what he had just admitted to and whirling around to stutter out a pathetic, “Uh, I - I mean…” at the same time Keith shoved him in he shoulder.

“I knew it, you ARE the guy from the market!” Keith accused, enjoying the sight of Lance scrambling. “Why didn’t you just say so, you didn’t have to lie once we were alone!”

“I mean, I don’t know, I’m sorry?” Lance flailed, looking thoroughly abashed and avoiding Keith’s eyes. “I uh… I mean it’s just weird, isn’t it? Who would believe that a prince wanders around dressed as a beggar and steals bread to feed a mute foreign girl?”

That ones gave Keith pause. “Well you specifically are weird, obviously,” Keith conceded. And then, in a very intentional tone, went on to sigh dramatically, “Come to think of it the idea of any prince wanting to get a little privacy and doing something OUTRAGEOUS like sneaking out of his palace in disguise is simply absurd! I can’t imagine a single person who could ever concoct such a dumb idea!”

Lance’s jaw hung open, blinking stupidly. And then, at almost the same exact moment, he and Keith both burst out into laughs, leaning into each other until the laughter faded into giggles, and then beyond as they settled into a comfortable silence.

By the time the fireworks had finished and Lance flew Keith home to drop him back off on his balcony, that flicker of vulnerable affection had blossomed into the first flames of love. By that same time the next night, Zakron had stolen a genie and nearly doomed the entire kingdom.

Honestly, the fact that his prince was a fraud who had nearly gotten them all killed was kind of a relief in retrospect. You couldn’t earn a happy ending without at least SOMETHING going horribly wrong first, after all.

\--


End file.
